Customer experience—CX—is a hot marketing buzzword. The concept encompasses every way and place where customers interact with your company, brand, and product. And marketing needs to get involved in every one of them. That means marketing needs to get out of the marketing department and support all parts of the company to infuse a branded customer experience through every customer touch point.
Marketing beyond the Marketing Department
Advertising, web sites, brochures, and social media are traditionally part of marketing’s purview. Savvy companies now realize marketing might need to get involved in more. Writing terms and conditions—lawyers are great at writing long, perplexing copy, but not at writing with the voice of the brand. Designing invoices and payment reminders should not be left to the accountants. Customer service processes and messages are another point of customer contact that need a marketing touch.
Why Customer Experience Matters
Various studies have shown companies that deliver an exceptional customer experience enjoy higher margins, greater customer loyalty, and growing market share.
- American Express reports 60% of customers will pay more for an improved experience
- Temkin Group found that billion dollar companies that invested in customer experience earned an incremental $700 million within 3 years –a 70% revenue increase
- It’s no wonder, then, that the Econsultancy and Adobe Digital Marketing Trends Report sows that 22% of companies named customer experience as “the single most exciting opportunity for their organization”
Keys to Delivering a Cohesive Customer Experience
- Plan the customer experience. Without intentional focus, customer experience just happens—undefined, uncoordinated, and inconsistent.
- Define the customer personas and their journeys. Know who your buyers are, how they gather information and make decisions, and exactly where they interact with your company before, during and after the sale.
- Educate everyone in the company about your brand and your customers. Engage non-marketing departments in identifying what they do that touches the customer and how they can change what they do for a better customer experience.
- Redesign every touchpoint to deliver the brand consistently and make an emotional connection.
- Track, measure, and respond. Determine metrics for each area and activity. Keep in touch with every part of the organization that interacts with customers. Track how well they are doing, collect feedback, respond to constantly improve.
CX is more than a buzzword. It is good business. As communications with customers grow more varied, overlapping, expansive, and complex, a customer-experience-centric approach can keep everyone and everything focused on the prize: A loyal, enthusiastic, and profitable customer.